Gateway NV5398U hard drive activity delay on Windows 8.1

vandidant · April 27, 2015

This old but fully functional notebook PC worked as expected with Windows 7, just as fast (or slow, rather) as it was when new.

After installing Windows 8.1, the graphics drivers were manually installed. This hardware seems to be quite old and obscure, so there were difficulties here, but eventually I found the correct driver. I did not change any BIOS settings, so whatever IRQ settings worked previously (most likely default) are still there.

The problem with Windows 8.1 from the start is that the hard drive is very slow to respond - after requesting an action from the computer, such as starting an application or opening a folder, nothing will happen for 5 seconds. Then the hard drive activity indicator will light up and whatever was requested will happen as usual. After installing the AMD graphics driver, this delay seemed to be shorter, but it's there and intolerable nonetheless.

In device manager, there are no question marks and Windows 8.1 claims that the SATA driver is the best version available.

I can't imagine it being a hardware problem, but likely a software conflict, or some Windows 8.1 default security setting that is delaying everything. Has anyone experienced an issue like this before, and how was it solved?